Painting Diamonds
by coeur.julia
Summary: karkat wants to be a good morial and not fail gamzze this time. even if the means painting with hot red.


Painting Diamonds

Summary:

Karkat dreams of red, red, red everywhere, all around him, clinging to him. There's a cool hand in his, a soft voice in his ear "S'a beautiful color, bright and beautiful, aint a thing wrong with the shade." It isn't a nightmare.

Notes: not mine

"Holy fuck, Gamzee, you're completely batshit insane." Karkat sputters, staring at the troll before him.

Gamzee nods. "I know, Karbro."  
"I can't fucking believe you just said that to me."  
"Figured you had a right to be getting your know on, is all."  
"Figured I- oh my fucking god, Gamzee!"

"Tried to make it stop." He slumps, defeatedly, refusing to meet Karkat's eyes like he has been since he dropped this fucking atomic bomb of a confession on him. "It won't motherfucking stop."

He's picking at his sleeve with the claws on his right hand, the other one clenches and releases and clenches again at his thigh. Karkat stares at him, agape. He shuffles; a guilty, ashamed little squirm.

Karkat wants to lose his shit again, wants to blurt out the first expletive that works its way out of his squawk blister and go from there, wants to highlight and bold and underline how completely fucking not ok this is, but. But Gamzee had done the right thing, hadn't he? He'd come to his moirail for help about this, had come looking for Karkat to keep him stable and sane.

Karkat wasn't gonna fuck this up again, he wasn't, he had goddamn learned from his past self, thanks. Gamzee needed help and Karkat was gonna be an actual fucking moirail this time around, and he sure as fuck wasn't gonna make Gamzee feel ashamed for being honest with him.

"Ok." he says, slowly, gathering his thoughts. "Ok, so. It's just me? You aren't gonna, like, go after Equius and Nepeta again?" He flinches as soon as it's out of his mouth, regretting it immediately for the way Gamzee tries to shrink in onto himself, shoulders all tight knots and misery and guilt.

"...No, I ain't got no inclination for this toward nobody else." He mumbles to the floor, and Karkat lets out a sigh. Thats… good. Thats good, right? Gamzee isn't gonna lose his shit and off anybody, the only one he apparently wants as a fucking paint source is Karkat, naturally, of fucking course, because he's a freak with mutant blood and it's not like the universe could let him fucking forget that, not like being one twelfth of the entire troll population would be enough to let him be anything other than a candy red fuck-up.

Karkat scrubs his hands over his face, trying to get his footing. "So you… Alright. Tell me what, exactly, is happening in your pan. Help me understand this shit, Gamzee. You want… what? Is it murder you're feeling again? You want to kill me and pa-"  
"No!" Gamzee cuts him off, frantic, looking at him dead on for the first time in this shit show of a conversation. "No, best friend, ain't nothing like that, that ain't even near a thing as I would ever want, wouldn't hurt you Karkat, wouldn't never, not-" and his breath catches and he stares all desperate and grief-stricken and overwhelmed. His voice drops almost to a whisper "Not so long as I was me, and all. Not so long as I could up and stop myself."

His hand raises, hovers in the air between them, above Karkat's thorax where he'd been skewered. Gamzee's fingers curl inward, and he brings his arm back, pulls it into his own chest like he's blocking an incoming attack

"I'm sorry." He says, in a voice so miserable it physically hurts to hear. "I won't ever hurt you, best friend, I'm better now. I'm so sorry. This isn't, its not." he chews his lip until purple swells at the tip of a fang and Karkat makes a worried sound and steps toward him. Gamzee flinches back like he isn't even aware he's doing it. "Ain't like that, best friend. Don't want that, won't ever want that. Not ever again."

Karkat nods, a little shakily. Steps forward again, raises a hand and paps his face. "Shoosh." he says, advancing again when Gamzee tries to dodge his touch, duck away from him. "Shoosh, Gamzee, I believe you. I believe you, ok?" Pap, pap, and Gamzee shakes his head a little, still chewing his lip bloody.

"Stop that." Karkat says, and Gamzee does, reluctantly. They both just breathe for a minute.

"Ok, so you don't plan on killing anybody, that's good to know. But Gamzee, I still, I don't. I'm trying to understand exactly what you're telling me, and I don't get it. Can you explain this to me?"

"I just-" Gamzee starts, and Karkat has to swat at him when he starts pricking his lip again. "It just. Gets at me, sometimes. I just start thinking on it and can't motherfucking stop. It gets all up in me, all… all." He takes a deep breath, still looking off somewhere in the middle distance. He licks the purple blood on his mouth and finally raises his eyes. "I know you hate it." He says, quietly. Karkat goes very, very still.

"I know you still up and hate it, best friend, and that's bullshit. Colors don't matter no more, like they did back home. Don't got half as much weight to em, and you. You still hate yourself so much, even with us all knowing. Even with all our friends knowing at what color you are and not getting their judgement on, not even the littlest bit. You're still all waxing spades for yourself like the most pitch-crushing motherfucker and I don't... I don't know how to make you stop."

Gamzee makes a little gesture with his hands, a sort of apologetic, guilty little wave. Karkat expects him to spiral off, to let his words trail, but he just takes another breath and keeps going.  
"I love you so motherfucking much, best friend." He says, like he's speaking from his very soul, and it's terrible the way his voice shakes for just a moment, like the weight of those words and the honesty behind them is too much for his vocal chords to carry. Karkat makes a noise like he's been punched. "I know its crazy shit, I know I don't make no goddamn sense but I think on you and your color and I get an ache in me beloved. Get a need all boiling and it ain't like it was before, it aint for pain or death or fear, its you, its for being all up and as close to you as a motherfucker can get and I, I don't…"

Now he does trail off, looking at Karkat with eyes so honest and filled with emotion it hurts to look at. Gamzee's taking deep breaths, not quite panting. He's been quiet thus far, didn't need to shout when his voice carried that much feeling and Karkat thinks he might cry, in the wake of this. Its too much.

"I'm sorry." Gamzee says again, barely a whisper. "I just… figured you oughta know."

Karkat takes a deep, shaky breath. "Ok. Ok Gamzee." he steps forward, wraps his arms around bony shoulders, rests his head on a skinny chest. They breathe. Karkat feels like they've been Jamming for hours, like someone wrung out all the feeling in his pusher like water from a rag, he's so tired all of a sudden, in the wake of this. He takes a deep breath. lets it out.

"So how do you want to do this?"

Gamzee is so gentle with him. Lays him back on the pile like a highblood in a palemance novel. Strips him of his sweater and brushes back his hair with faintly trembling hands. He keeps stopping, hesitant, like he's checking that this is ok. Karkat wants to reassure him, but he's not sure it is.

Gamzee kisses him, soft and sweet and pale as fuck, kisses his ears and cheeks and nose, runs cool, long-fingered hands through his hair. He'll stop if Karkat asks him to, he promised, he'll stop. Karkat makes himself relax into his moirail's careful hold.  
Hands find his horn beds, rub gently at first and then slowly working up a rhythm that has all the tension leaving his head and neck. A cold nose is nuzzled against his cheek, breath washing over his face in soft little puffs. It smells like faygo, of fucking course. Faygo and chocolate. Because Gamzee is an idiot with a sweet tooth who consumes every sugary thing he can get his mitts on, seriously how have his fangs not rotted out of his nugbone yet…

Karkat is distracting himself. He makes himself stop and goes back to enjoying what Gamzee is doing, only Gamzee has stopped doing anything. He's staring down at him, brow furrowed, concerned. Waiting.  
"I'm ok." Karkat says and tries to mean it. "I'm good, you can keep going."

Gamzee's mouth twists, uncertain, but his fingers find Karkat's horns again. "You don't have to, best friend." Gamzee reminds him, and Karkat closes his eyes.

"Just… go slow."

Gamzee moves like molasses. It takes him a small eternity before he releases Karkat's horns, and then his fingers skate down the sides of his neck and land on his shoulders, work at the knots in the muscles there until even just the thought of moving his arms is enough to make Karkat want to protest. Clever fingers run down his chest, claws scrape so gently at grubscars and fingertips trace battle scars and Karkat would be half out his mind and purring were this any other situation.

Its not any other situation, and for all his body has been reduced to a troll shaped puddle of warm goo, his mind is whirring and his thoughts are sharp-edged and stab at him like knives. He's waiting for pain, waiting for the first prick of Gamzee's claw against his skin and the fucking tension is killing worse than the fear is.

So focused on waiting, even, that it takes him a second to notice the pain when it comes. Gamzee takes one of Karkat's hands in his own and raises his wrist to his lips, kissing the skin there softly, again, again. And then he opens his mouth and bites.

His fangs are sharp and thin, and the pain at first is more of a prick, a slow sting. Gamzee is careful, as steady-slow as any trained mediculler, He gets the tips of his canines into the soft skin of Karkat's wrist, the veins there spurting grotesquely just a little before the blood starts flowing, and Karkat realizes, suddenly, that he's having trouble breathing. His pusher is pounding out a frantic beat against the insides of his organ cage. He grits his teeth and tries to swallow down the panic welling in him, keep Gamzee from seeing.

Gamzee isn't looking at him though. He's staring at his wrist that he cradles gently in one hand. His eyes are blown wide, thin gray rings streaked here and there with purple around pupils the size of a fucking moon, goddamn. He licks his lips absently, purple tongue running over the freak red on his teeth while he pulls an uncapped glass jar out of his sylladex and sets it down in front of him without looking away from the bite on Karkat's arm.

He lowers Karkat's hand over the mouth of the jar, and there's already a small stack of pillows there, already a little nest where he can lay his arm in a comfortable position and still be used as fucking paint. Karkat wonders just how much of this Gamzee already had planned out.

Karkat thinks he might puke, in a second.

He watches his blood drip from his wrist and into the jar in a sort of detached horror, then looks out the corner of his eye at Gamzee, still licking at his lips like he's searching for more blood. When he realizes there isn't any to be found, he raises his hand - the one that was holding Karkat's wrist - and laps at the smears of red there. Whatever that look on his face is, whatever it means, it makes Karkat feel like the drones are on his heels, like Jack Noir is breathing down his neck, like there's nowhere left for him to run, to hide.

He didn't know he was crying until the sob breaks out of him, this wretched, tiny little thing, and Gamzee's eyes snap to his face with such awful, terrifying intensity and Karkat cries harder, he can't breathe, what's happening-

"Oh, best friend…" Gamzee's fingers thread through his hair, he leans in to press their foreheads together. His hands are trembling.

"Oh, brightest most perfect little diamond of mine, sugargrub, my pale beloved red star." Gamzee's thumbs brush at his cheeks, catch mutant-hot tears and wipe them away. His voice is barely a whisper "Best beloved, you were so brave, ain't never seen a motherfucker with as much backbone as you got, look at you. Breathe now, breathe with me, I'm right here."

Gamzee keeps their heads together, and Karkat lets his eyes close, feels the steady moving of Gamzee's thorax against his own, tries to match his breathing, tries to follow - slowly, his pusher calms, some of the awful thrumming in his limbs eases off. He can breathe.

"There you go, that's good, there we go. You're so brave Karkat. Karkat. Pale for you. Pale like bone, pale like stars, oh my beloved, my diamond, you done so well just now."

He pets Karkat all over, like he did before, tweaks at his horns and thumbs at his temples and runs careful hands over his chest and shoulders until he's starting to relax again. Karkat feels like a wet rag, wrung out and exhausted, twisted into new shapes.

A moment later Gamzee sits back up and reaches out, and Karkat turns his head to watch as Gamzee's hand wraps around his wrist. The jar is full of bright red mutant blood. Karkat doesn't have the energy for horror.

Gamzee bandages his wrist with supplies out of his sylladex, and Karkat knows he doesn't carry those usually, didn't have those on him before. When his arm is cleaned up and the bleeding stopped, his wrist wrapped securely, Gamzee tilts his head and kisses his wrist again, and Karkat lets his eyes slip closed.

Gamzee lays his arm down and moves away, and Karkat hears the click of the jar being capped, Gamzee shuffling away. Now? Is he gonna do it now? But Gamzee just sets the jar down, a soft sound of glass on wood, and comes back, curls up around him in the pile.

Karkat doesn't think he's ever been this tired.

"Sorry" Gamzee's saying. "Sorry, sorry Karkat, shouldn't have, fuck I'm sorry, best friend, that was-" and Karkat raises a hand blindly and paps whatever he can reach, feel like a shoulder, manages a "shoosh, idiot. I'm ok." and finds, to his shock, he almost means it,

"... alright." Gamzee says, and huddles down closer, wraps his bony arms around him like a wiggler with a comfort toy. "Get your sleep on, best bro. You look beat." and then, almost too quiet to hear "... Thank you."

Karkat dreams of red, red, red, everywhere all around him, clinging to him. There's a cool hand in his, a soft voice in his ear S'a beautiful color, bright and beautiful, ain't a thing wrong with the shade. It isn't a nightmare.

Gamzee isn't there when he wakes up, and for a second Karkat's upset about that, but there's noises off to the side of him, shuffling and wet sounds and breathy little noises. Blearily, tiredly, Karkat rolls over and opens his eyes, and Gamzee is kneeling across the room with his sleeves rolled up and the jar opened next to him. Its a small thing, Karkat could have bled more and been fine, he thought Gamzee would take more.

Karkat watches Gamzee dip a brush into the jar and pull it up wet with blood. There are bowls next to him, and Karkat realizes with a jolt that one of them is filled with purple. The others are just paint, Gamzee got the code from Jade, maybe. But among the vibrant earth colors are Karkat's and Gamzee's blood, and Gamzee is painting with them, and it's the dumbest thing, all of a sudden, because Karkat wants to know what he's painting. Needs to see it, needs to know.

He staggers up from the pile and his body is still heavy, his muscles don't want to cooperate. He wants to lie back down. Wow, Gamzee really did a number on him, fuck.

Gamzee doesn't startle when Karkat comes up behind him. He turns to look over his shoulder with a look on his face Karkat can't read, and he smiles. Its not dopey, but its soft. Tender. Too damn loving to deal with so soon after waking up, so Karkat looks past him and at the wall.

… Its him. Stylized in shades of red, its him and the game their story, its him and the other trolls, their friends, and they're fighting. Gamzee, there, in the corner, killing the Black King, its him and them trolling the humans, its him and Dave and the mayor, its him fighting, laughing, crying. Bleeding, in some. Dying. But those are muted, shards of dark pain among the vibrant, all-but glowing scenes of him and them and bright bright red, and a lot of it is artistic interpretations but it all seems like something out of a history schoolfeed. Glory and Victory and Strength.

And there, in the very front, the main focus of the mural, there is Gamzee on one knee, and Karkat standing a bit in front of him, and every line of that image, the body language, the look on paint-Gamzee's purple face, every bit of it screams devotion. There's a bright red diamond in the background.

And out of the painting, in real life, Gamzee looks up at Karkat with his eyes bright and a smear of red blood on one cheek from wiping his face with the back of one hand. And Karkat realizes, suddenly, out of nowhere, that he thinks he might be okay.

"... Evening, Gamzee." Karkat says. "Thats… thats kinda cool."

Gamzee grins like sunshine, rises up to press a kiss to his forehead. "Evening, best friend. Thank you."


End file.
